STOWAWAY TO THE STARS

When Larry heard the faint buzz from the ID reader at the spaceport security desk, he guessed what it was even before he saw the official stiffen in surprise, and he reacted at once. As he sprinted for the exit he heard Karen cry out behind him. A guy lounging on a bench near the exit looked up, and the next moment he was on his feet and in pursuit.

Larry reached the exit door a few strides ahead of the spook. As he went through, he made time for a quick glance over his shoulder. The image that burned into his brain was of Karen struggling with the security official. His instinct screamed at him to go back and help her, but the spook was bearing down on him and struggling to pull something from his pocket. He had to stick to the plan, but that hadn’t included putting Karen in the frame for aiding his escape. Shit, things were not going well.

The exit door opened onto a large concourse. Larry sprinted through its milling occupants, maintaining his slender lead over his pursuer. The crowds were a blessing – they must be making it difficult for the guy to use his stun gun. Before he reached the outer doors a warning message boomed out over the speaker system.

“TEMPORARY LOCK DOWN COMING INTO OPERATION IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EXIT THE SPACEPORT UNTIL AUTHORIZED TO DO SO.”

The message still echoed round the concourse as he hit the outer door a fraction before the bolts slammed into place. As he burst into the street outside he swung the door shut again in the face of the following spook, and managed to hold it shut while the bolts recycled. He could imagine the spook glaring at him through the one-way armorglass. A handful of pedestrians outside stared at him curiously. He addressed the crowd at large to forestall any interference.

“Phew, that was close. I’m already late for an appointment. I didn’t want to be stuck in there for half an hour.”

It would have taken a brave citizen to challenge that, and people suddenly had other things to attend to. Larry strode away toward the subsurface transport system entrance, weaving through the slower walkers as much as he dared without drawing attention. He also snatched several backward glances for signs of spooks based outside. Damn it, he could see a guy on the far side of the road showing an undue interest. He needed distance fast.

Being on home territory, he should be able to lose anyone on these streets. He switched into his avoidance routine. Keep in the thickest part of the crowds on the street. Go into every shop with multiple entrances. Plus he knew several alleyways that made short cuts.

Forty minutes later, he was catching his breath in a quiet bar with plenty of exits, a good three kilometers from the spaceport. That should have taken care of the Ziloni agents. The next concern was how long it would take the authorities to extract images of him with his face molding from the spaceport cameras and put the new templates of him into the citywide camera computer system. Allowing for typical bureaucratic delays, he reckoned he had two or three hours. At last he had a moment to find out what had happened to Karen. He activated his earpiece, making a mental note to kill it again so that it wouldn’t broadcast his voice if he had to speak to anyone. But hers was dead.

What was happening to Karen? Normally, the authentic ID should have ensured that she could get away with sticking to their cover story but, impetuous as always, his last glimpse of her was fighting with the security official. That had enabled him to escape, but it would ensure that she was arrested and suffered an intensive interrogation. How would she cope with that?

After another twenty minutes worrying about Karen, he gave up on the earpiece. He left the bar, found the nearest public vid-phone, shielded his face from the camera and punched Ket’s number. He got only a recorded message and he wasn’t about to broadcast his voice, however well he might try to disguise it, into an answering system for the world to monitor. He retreated back to the bar and spent the next hour and a half in increasing desperation.

Finally he knew he had to do something more. He killed the earpiece and used the vid-phone to leave a recorded message for Ket in the most disguised voice he could manage, before putting a good kilometer between himself and the vidphone that his fevered imagination envisaged being swooped on by police.

****

Karen came back to consciousness abruptly, with a pounding headache. She had a feeling of pins and needles in her arm where a tall, heavily built man in a white coverall was pulling out a syringe. She was sitting in a hard, upright chair, her hands fastened together in front of her with a plastic strap that cut into her wrists. In front of her was a small, circular, unpainted metal table. The official she had wrestled with at the security desk sat on the other side. The rest of the room was bare, with stark white walls, brightly lit from the inevitable hidden source.

The man in the coverall stood to one side and said in a bored voice, “There you are Granstich, I’ve counteracted the stun dart. She’s all yours now.”

Granstich leaned across the table and stared intently into her eyes. He was also tall, but thin to the point of emaciation, with a drawn face and prominent crow’s feet round the eyes.

“Right, you stupid bitch, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I’m guessing that you’re the sacrificial lamb in this little scheme to get Rasilii through security. It’s Rasilii we want, and your damned intervention let him get away from me. With or without your help we will get him soon, so why not tell me everything you know and make things easy for yourself?”

Dear God, Karen, you really have got yourself into a mess this time. Larry’s on the run and here you are, an illegal primitive on an alien planet, alone and in deep shit with spaceport security. With Larry gone, a surge of loneliness and helplessness overwhelmed her. What would they do to her? Throw her in jail or deport her back to Earth? Perhaps they’d give her a jail sentence and then send her home.

But Larry seemed to think that her cover would hold up. She must stick to her story. And some waterworks wouldn’t go amiss right now. That should give her a little breathing space, and fit with her cover.

Fighting to concentrate through the pounding in her head, she burst out into the most convincing tears that she could manage and wailed, “I don’t understand what you are talking about. What have you done to my husband? Why are you chasing him? We have just got married and came here for a nice holiday, and suddenly you try to shoot him and drag me in here.”

This infuriated Granstich more and for the next ten minutes she clung to her cover story while he alternately browbeat her, cajoled and threatened her.

At length he glared at her in frustration. “This is your last chance. I’ve already got enough to hold you for interfering with my attempt to apprehend a wanted fugitive. If you mess me about any more I’m holding you equally responsible with Rasilii for trying to smuggle him back onto Central.”

Karen squeezed out a few more tears and whispered, “Please, sir, I don’t understand what you want me to say. I’ve told you the truth, why will you not believe me?”

He flung himself back in his chair and gave a weary sigh. “All right, we’ll do it the hard way. Warbast, get me an ID technician. We’ll expose this stupid story about her being an innocent victim of Rasilii, once we find out who she really is.”

Oh Lord, please let my ID hold up to close scrutiny.

The entire time that Warbast was gone, Granstich avoided looking at her, picking at his fingernails and brushing imaginary specks from his uniform.

Warbast returned with the technician, a short, fussy man with an owlish stare and abrupt mannerisms.

Granstich briefed him succinctly. “The guy she was with had a fake ID that showed up on our scanner straight away, but for some reason hers didn’t. I want to know exactly how she managed that, and who she really is.”

The technician nodded. He laid the small box he was carrying on the table and opened it out. It contained a computer and screen and a heavy, black reader about the size of a tennis ball, connected to the rest of his apparatus by a thick but flexible cable.

“I’ll need her unbound to get her finger in the reader.”

Granstich grunted and nodded to Warbast, who produced a small knife that sliced through the plastic tie like a strand of cotton. Karen tried to rub her sore wrists but the technician grabbed her left hand and jammed her little finger into the reader.

For several minutes he played with the computer, consulted the screen and twisted her finger about in the reader. At one point Karen caught a glimpse of what looked like a giant x-ray of her finger on the screen. Eventually he stood upright, eased his back and shook his head at Granstich.

“Well, what have you found?”

“Nothing. It’s genuine.”

“Bullshit, there’s got to be something wrong.”

“And I’m telling you it’s genuine. It’s passed every authentication test there is.”

“Well, maybe it’s a stolen ID. She’s supposed to be from Drazen, I’ve heard that they have a black market in that sort of thing there. Have you tested her DNA against the ID?”

“No, the ID doesn’t have DNA details in its record. It’s not a requirement of the Interstellar Convention for IDs, and a lot of the Associate planets don’t bother with it. They take the view that you can get the DNA from a few skin cells direct from the target. It doesn’t matter, because if it was a black market ID, then either her original deactivated ID would be in place, or if she was really thorough, there’d be signs of surgical removal. These IDs normally embed themselves deep into the bone and you can’t get them out without making a fair mess of the bone, but her finger is clean as a whistle. No sign of work on the bone, no scarring on the finger, just a tiny prick, but that could be anything. They can’t do keyhole surgery through a hole that small.”

“Oh shit, I don’t know then. Maybe she’s had a cloned finger?”

“Oh please, do you think I wouldn’t see the signs of a graft? You want me to check her shoulder to see if she’s had the whole arm cloned?”

Granstich looked at him in disgust. “Okay, I get the picture. She’s genuine. Thanks anyway.” He didn’t sound very grateful, but the man nodded briskly and packed his apparatus away.

Warbast had been standing quietly to one side all this time, but now he intervened. “Why is it so crucial whether or not she is this Maret Lidison? Surely she could still be Rasilii’s accomplice, working under her real identity?”

Granstich shook his head. “The first thing I did when we caught this woman, while she was still stunned, was to look up the real Maret Lidison on the main database. She’s a country hick from Drazen who’s never been off the planet before. She’s clean apart from a couple of minor convictions for petty theft. There’s no way that Maret Lidison is Rasilii’s accomplice. She has to be a stooge that Rasilii fooled into providing him with cover, just as she’s been claiming.”

Talk about me as if I wasn’t here, why don’t you. Karen hadn’t followed all the technicalities of the discussion, but she understood well enough that somehow they’d been taken in because she’d never had an ID before. Her resilience was once again kicking in, and she was feeling – not enjoyment, but a kind of adrenalin rush and exhilaration. This primitive Earthgirl had pulled the wool over the eyes of these clever Union guys – with the help of Larry’s expensive ID of course. Even the pounding in her head was feeling better, having eased to a dull ache.

Granstich collected himself, and turned back to her with a strained smile on his face.

“Ms Lidison, I owe you an apology. Please understand that it was your behavior, stopping me from apprehending Rasilii, that convinced me you must be involved in his scheme. I realize now that it must have been just a natural reaction. But I do have to tell you that the man you think of as Lazar Rinato is really Laren’hi Jalid Rasilii, a man wanted by the police who has been a fugitive on the run for several weeks. It would appear that he has deceived you badly into marrying him, to provide cover for him to try and get back onto Central. Which makes him a real piece of scum to my mind.”

She must still concentrate on keeping up her act until she could get away, and not show the elation that she was feeling. Time for a final display of tears.

“I don’t believe Lazar could be mixed up in all this. He has been so gentle and kind to me.” That last part was true enough.

Granstich was thawing now. He was probably a decent man, but he had a job to do and she had given him good cause to doubt her. In fact, she was exactly what he had suspected, except that she knew that Larry was innocent.

“Ms Lidison, remember that you have not known him long. A man like that can be very persuasive. Don’t feel badly about it, but you do need to understand that you mean nothing to him.

“Technically there is still the matter of assaulting a security officer. However, in the circumstances I think we will be prepared to waive charges. We shall need you to remain on Central until we apprehend him and get your situation sorted out. Is there anyone that you know on Central, or somewhere that you can stay? And do you have any money with you?”

“No, Lazar had all the money, and I have never been on Central or met anyone from here,” she responded truthfully. “Although Lazar, oh, I suppose I mean Rasilii, did give me a number for someone. He said it was a friend, um, Ketar’hi something. Do you suppose that he is another criminal, or someone legitimate who can help me?” She felt bad about suggesting that Ket might be a criminal, but she needed to sound confused and uncertain.

“Let me check it out for you. If it’s a collaborator I’d like to know who it is. If it’s someone genuine, he can help you. What’s the number?”

Karen pretended to rack her brain. “Er, 111 589, er, 722 615. No, that is 651. Yes, that was it. 111 589 722 651. Definitely.”

“Okay, come with me. Let’s find you somewhere more comfortable while I find out who has this number.”

He led her out of the interview room, down a short corridor and into a much larger, pleasant office with two other people working at large, cluttered desks. On the way she caught a glimpse of the public area where she had been arrested. The guy she suspected of being a Ziloni spook was still hanging around. He was looking elsewhere at that moment and she hurried out of his view. He didn’t seem to have spotted her.

Granstich seated her beside his own desk and tapped away at a computer screen. A pleasant elderly lady at the next desk offered to get her a glass of yaquord to drink. She accepted gratefully.

Granstich gave an exclamation of satisfaction and looked up at Karen. “You’re right, this number is for a Ketar’hi Dartelii. He’s the brother-in-law of your fugitive, Laren’hi Rasilii, but he’s also a Galactic Council official. It looks as if he may be a genuine contact, and Rasilii has at least done that much for you. Would you like me to talk to him for you?”

“Oh, yes please. I would not know what to say to him.” She still needed to stay in character.

He disappeared into another room. Karen sipped her drink. What was coming next, and what would this Ket be like?

Granstich was gone for ages. Karen had finished another glass of yaquord by the time he returned. He was accompanied by another man, even taller than Granstich, thin with a saturnine face, dark brown skin and straight, dark hair slicked down. He was dressed in clothes that looked for all the world like an old-fashioned suit and reminded her somehow of Victorian England. This had to be Ket. He was so different from Larry. But then it was his wife who was Larry’s sister, so she had no reason to be surprised.

He rushed over to her and grasped one of her hands in both of his.

“My dear young lady, I am so sorry about what has happened. And I can’t understand it. Larry can be reckless and impetuous sometimes, but this is unlike him. What he’s done is unforgivable. I shall use all my influence to make sure he pays for putting you through all this.”

She felt a rush of guilt at misleading Larry’s brother-in-law so badly, but gritted her teeth and maintained her role. She couldn’t give the game away now, she was almost free.

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Dartelii. I am feeling quite devastated by finding out that Lazar is not real. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t worry about a thing, my dear. Come with me and I’ll deal with everything.”

He turned to the security official. “Mr. Granstich, thank you for your help and understanding. I’ll take care of Ms Lidison until I hear from you – you’ve got my number. I can tell you, right now I am totally embarrassed to be associated with Laren’hi Rasilii.”

As they were about to leave, Karen remembered the Ziloni spook hovering outside.

“Oh dear, do we have to go out there in front of all those people? I feel so embarrassed after what I have done.”

“I do understand. Mr. Granstich, I wonder if we could impose on you once more. Is there a back way out where Ms Lidison doesn’t have to be seen?”

“Yes, I think we can manage that.”

They were escorted through several offices and finally decanted onto a quiet street to one side of the spaceport. As they left, Karen flicked her hair back over her shoulders in her characteristic mannerism.

“Right, my dear.” Ket put his arm round her shoulders. “I came in the front entrance. This street seems to be on the left-hand side of the spaceport. My car is in the main spaceport parking area round the back. I think that will be this way.” He turned to the right.

“Ket, I don’t think we should go back to your car. There are Ziloni agents everywhere looking for Larry and me. I am sure they will be watching your car. We need to find another way that will avoid being seen.”

If she had kicked him between the legs the effect could scarcely have been more dramatic. He snatched his arm away and stared at her with a shocked and angry look.

“Holy shit, I knew that stuff about Larry seducing you had to be all wrong.”

Yes, the only time we got it together, I did the seducing.

Ket glared at her. “You’d better explain what the fuck is going on, young lady.”

Karen had the feeling that he didn’t swear like that very often.

“Ket, I’m truly sorry. It was Larry’s idea. I’ll explain everything later, but we really are in danger. They’ve tried to kill us more than once. They were even willing to shoot down a spaceliner, so I don’t think they’ll hesitate to kill you as well.”

Ket looked stunned for a moment. His expression changed as he slowly absorbed her bombshell revelations. Then he nodded grimly, spun on his heel and headed the other way down the street. As he went he muttered, half to himself, “So the spaceliner captain was right about Larry being involved in that incident.”

A few seconds later, they were mingling with the crowds in the main thoroughfare outside the spaceport. The lockdown of the spaceport after Larry’s breakaway had caused a fair amount of chaos that was still being dealt with. Ket used his height to see and navigate a route through the crowds, glancing back irritably from time to time to make sure that Karen was keeping up with him. What a contrast with the way Larry had held her hand during their escape through the woods on Zilon. But then, he had not been annoyed with her the way Ket clearly was.

He led her to the entrance of the local subsurface transport system. Ket scanned the people around them intently as they made their way down a series of escalators, and once straight up the adjacent escalator.

At length they boarded a shuttle unit and he whispered, “I think we’re safe. For a while there, I suspect we had a tail, but we’ve shaken him off.”

Karen looked at him in admiration. “You don’t look the type for this espionage stuff.”

He gave a little smirk. “I’m not, but Larry dragged me into practicing with him a couple of times, so I got the hang of it. Now, are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

Karen looked round at all the other passengers, many within earshot. “I don’t think this is a good place. What I can tell you is that Larry has evidence that proves his innocence. That is what brought us back to Central. And I have a backup data pin with the evidence. Is there somewhere safe we can put it?”

Ket nodded. “I have my data processing unit that I can use to read it, and upload the data to various secure computer systems. Then it will be fully protected. We just need to find somewhere private to do it.”

They sat in silence, giving Karen the opportunity to study this new mode of transport. The seats were comfortable and spacious, and the shuttle ride was amazingly smooth and completely silent except for a faint sound of rushing wind.

Ket looked at her as a thought must have struck him. “You won’t have heard, but there’s been hell to pay over that missile attack on the spaceliner. The captain was hopping mad, even more so with the Ziloni than Larry, thanks to that final maneuver of his to break away from the liner and save it. There’s a major inquiry going on, and all foreign travel to Zilon has stopped.”

“Really? Larry did say he thought it would cause trouble.”

“Well he wasn’t wrong. It’s a big relief to find that he managed to get away. No one knew what had happened to the so-called terrorist spaceship. They reported missiles exploding but didn’t locate any large debris.”

It was amusing the way Ket only referred to Larry. He clearly didn’t realize that she had been with Larry. Oh well, she wasn’t going to correct him right now, when anyone might be listening in.

The shuttle came to a stop and they changed to a different one, rode for two more stops and emerged into a huge arcade. Ket led the way to a quiet bar, bought them both a glass of lizan and found an empty alcove in the far corner.

“Right, now I can read your data pin and upload it to my office computer. Have you got it?”

“Yes, but, um, I need a bit of privacy. I can’t get to it in front of other people.”

“Really. Well, there should be a rest room somewhere.” He looked around. “Over there, the door opposite.”

Karen returned a minute or two later and handed over the precious pin. Ket turned it over a couple of times in his fingers, then plugged it into one of several different sockets in his unit.

His fingers flew over the unit and a sequence of images flashed on the screen. Ket whistled. For the next ten minutes he became absorbed in the contents. Karen looked over his shoulder, but found reading the Universal on the tiny display slow and painful. She soon gave up and looked around.

Ket interrupted her thoughts. “I’ve uploaded the contents of your pin to my office computer, to my boss, the Council secretariat and every Council member I know. The contents of this pin are dynamite. No wonder the Ziloni have been moving heaven and earth to stop you and Larry getting it through. Have you seen it?”

“No, Larry just said it was justification for what he had done. I couldn’t read all that stuff on the screen. What did it say?”

“The key part of the scheme is that the Ziloni are preparing a huge stockpile of weapons and ships on Inferior. They intend to use it in a bid for independence from the Union.”

Karen looked at him in alarm. “You mean they plan to fight a war?”

“No. There is no way they could assemble a big enough fleet to defeat the Union. Their hope is that once the existence of such a large, albeit illegal, military force is announced, the Union won’t have the stomach for the bloody battle that would be needed to bring them into line, just to stop them achieving independence.”

“I can see that makes what they are doing illegal, but is it so very terrible. You should know that on my planet there is a long history of countries and peoples fighting to achieve independence.”

“I’m sorry, but this is quite different. Planets have independence now for most internal matters, provided that they respect human rights. This is about the control of space travel. In the short term it would break the Union’s monopoly on space travel, but in the long term it could be disastrous.”

Karen wrinkled her nose. “Are you sure you are not being a little paranoid? It doesn’t sound that critical to me.”

Ket shook his head vigorously. “I can assure you that this scenario has been considered many times by the Galactic Council, and however it is simulated, the final outcome is always a disaster. Other discontented planets will join with the Ziloni and cause the fragmentation of the Union. Without the central control by the Union there would be no effective policing of space and the Galactic Sector is likely to descend into chaos.”

Karen smiled. “So Larry’s evidence might help you put a stop to their plans. I’m so glad what we’ve been through seems to have been worthwhile.”

“Absolutely. It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of this intel. What I need to do now is fix up a meeting with my chief contact on the Council. It is urgent that he sees this information straight away. I should also be able to get Larry some sort of reprieve. But we can relax a little now that the data is safe. I’d like to know exactly what’s been going on. How you managed to get this data and smuggle yourselves back to Central. So, Maret, I’m guessing that you are an IEP colleague of Larry’s, though I never heard him mention you.”

Karen gave a little peal of laughter. “Oh Ket, I am nothing of the sort. I am simply an ordinary girl who got tangled up with Larry when he was in hiding, before the Ziloni caught up with him. And my name is not really Maret Lidison. It is Karen Marshall.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Granstich assured me that your ID was authentic and original.”

“Well yes, for some reason Larry decided to get me an authentic ID on Drazen, and it was original in the sense that it is the only one I have ever had.”

“That can’t be. Everyone has an ID from birth. Except . . .” His eyes widened. “Dear God, are you from a primitive planet? Is that where Larry was hiding, outside the Union?”

Karen nodded, grinning broadly at Ket’s surprise.

“Then you must have been with him all the time. How the hell did he manage to smuggle you into the Union? Wait a minute, if you’ve been with him all the time you must have been with him when he invaded Zilon. That’s impossible!”

Karen gave another wicked grin. “Why is it impossible that I went with Larry to Zilon? Because I am a woman?”

Ket colored visibly and spluttered in protest. “No, no, not at all. Anyone, man or woman, would be crazy to go on such a suicidal mission. You must be as mad as Larry.”

So Karen explained the whole story to Ket. When she had finished he sat in stunned silence for a few seconds. Eventually he spoke.

“Maret – I mean Karen – you are incredible. Does Larry realize how lucky he was that it was you who stowed away in his ship?”

She shrugged. “I am sure he would have managed perfectly well without me. Anyway, what do we do now?”

“Like I said, I need to get back to my office to get things organized. It would be better if I don’t take you. The Ziloni could be watching my office, and if they see you they might be desperate enough to mount an attack. So the question is, where can you hide until it’s safe? And I wonder what’s happening to Larry.”

Karen blanched and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh dear Lord, I am awful. I was supposed to contact him as soon as I could, but I’ve been so distracted by being interrogated, and then getting this data safe. We have a pair of communication earpieces, he said he would switch his on if he had to make a run for it.”

Ket shook his head in disbelief. “Karen, will you ever stop surprising me? Okay, that sounds like a good idea. But Larry shouldn’t speak. All broadcasts are monitored continuously by computers. Those earpieces are highly directional and have pretty sophisticated frequency switching algorithms, but I wouldn’t rely on them to beat the computer scanners. They have their own equally clever matching algorithms. If they pick up his voice they’ll identify him and track him down from the transmission. So here’s what we should do.”